Meet Eye Lounge Art Collective's Three New Members

Bob Allen, Tess Mosko Scherer, and Rossitza Todorova are the newest members of the Eye Lounge artist-run collective in downtown Phoenix's Roosevelt Row.

Eye Lounge shows contemporary art by emerging and established artists. It launched in 2000, and moved to the current Eye Lounge gallery in 2001.

Other current members include Samantha Lyn Aasen, Malena Barnhart, Ashley Czajkowski, Tawny Kerr, Ellen Nemetz, Kazuma Sambe, and Danielle Wood.

Despite diverse backgrounds, all three new members have at least one thing in common. They’ve all spent years making art and working in arts administration.

Allen was interim director for the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture in 2010, and served as deputy director at the Phoenix Convention Center for many years. Scherer was artistic director at Shemer Art Center from 2015 until earlier this year.

Todorova became major and planned giving officer at Phoenix Art Museum in February, after working in development at ASU Art Museum since 2013. Basically, she builds relationships that foster financial gifts.

All three studied art in college.

Todorova earned her master of fine arts degree in drawing and painting from ASU in 2013. Scherer holds a bachelor of arts degree in art and elementary education. For Allen, college was punctuated by time serving in the U.S. Navy.

Of course, gallerygoers are more interested in what they create.

Allen uses a colorful palette, building up texture for acrylic paintings that often include collage elements created using found images.

For his first solo exhibition as an Eye Lounge member, Allen will explore “brotherhood, big pharma, wrongful arrest, odious current events” and other themes.

Todorova works in drawing, printmaking, and installations to explore the concepts of time and transformation. In 2015, she showed work inside a small Eye Lounge space called the project room.

Scherer creates mixed-media works reflecting her interest in human psychology, including the light and shadow theories of early 20th-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

More than 100 artists have been part of Eye Lounge through the years, including Ann Morton, Daniel Funkhouser, Joe Willie Smith, and Denise Yaghmourian.

Several former members have created works of public art, and had solo exhibitions at various galleries, museums, and other art venues in and beyond Phoenix.

Current members do one solo exhibition at Eye Lounge each year. The collective has not announced when the first solo exhibitions for its newest members will take place.

Eye Lounge also presents groups exhibitions of works by members, alumni, and other Arizona artists. New exhibitions open during First and Third Friday art walks.